Ebola Update

Perhaps it is a good lesson on how the media operates. Stories are sensationalised and the more they can ferment at atmosphere of threat, the more people will want more news because they fear their survival is at risk. Such was the case with the Ebola crisis. For 2 whole weeks, according to the wall-to-wall coverage, we were one step away from the Walking Dead. Instead, today we have the good news that the World Health Organisation (WHO) has declared Liberia to be Ebola free.

This means that the country has gone 42 days (twice the maximum incubation period for the deadly disease) without any new cases. Of course the aid group, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) urged vigilance until the disease is also extinguished in neighboring Guinea and Sierra Leone. These countries continue to report new cases and all it takes is for one sick patient to slip over the border into Liberia to spark a resurgence of cases.

There is no high praise that is enough for the brave medical personnel from various countries in the world who came to the aid of these nations. In Liberia alone 4,700 people were killed by the virus during the year-long epidemic. Perhaps more could have been done if not for the fear generated by the media and latched on to by governments like our own.

President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, of Liberia, celebrated the milestone but said the damage wrought by the worst Ebola outbreak in history was “a scar on the conscience of the world.” For some survivors, she said, “the pain and grief will take a generation to heal.” Nevertheless, Sirleaf said she was confident her country was now prepared to deal quickly should new cases come.

NEWSLETTER

Inspirational Quotes

This lack of physical contact and encounter, encouraged at times by the disintegration of our cities, can lead to a numbing of conscience and to tendentious analyses which neglect parts of reality. At times this attitude exists side by side with a “green” rhetoric. Today, however, we have to realize that a true ecological approach always becomes a social approach; it must integrate questions of justice in debates on the environment, so as to hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor. (49)

Pope Francis I

Ladauto Si

"How is it that sometimes subtly, sometimes with a sudden startle, God breaks through the thick fog of our collective blindness? Our lives confront us with the inevitable experience of our own suffering, the suffering we cause to others, the pain we experience in and with the suffering of others."

—Elaine M. Prevallet

"Don’t wait for some miracle to be performed on you from without, lifting you above your fears and doubts and self-centeredness. You help God from within by turning in outgoing love to others, and miraculously your fears and doubts and self-centeredness will vanish. The miracle starts within, not from without."